


The Edge of a Dream

by Luck_O_Tucker



Series: The Bonds Between Us [3]
Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:21:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22874662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luck_O_Tucker/pseuds/Luck_O_Tucker
Summary: A dream of the future is threatened by a nightmare from the past.
Relationships: Friendship - Relationship
Series: The Bonds Between Us [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1642147
Kudos: 7





	The Edge of a Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Let's sing another chorus, folks... It's the same old song. That is to say, this is not a new story. Probably originally posted about 5(?) years ago. Didn't change anything, except a few spelling errors and omitting of repeated words. Trip is now an active-duty Starfleet officer, hoping to make the final cut for posting about Enterprise NX01...

The Edge of a Dream

Spring, 2151

“How you doing, Lieutenant?” The Commander’s voice sounded from above and ahead of him.  
Trip Tucker scanned the ancient, rough-hewn stairs leading up the side of the bluff, estimating the steps until he reached the spot where Jonathan Archer stood. “No problems, Commander!” He called back, shifting his pack and wiping a trickle of sweat out of his eyes. It was getting hot, now that they were out from under the shelter of the trees. Still, it would only be a couple more minutes until he reached the plateau and had himself another good refreshing drink of water.  
“All right, see you up ahead!” Turning, Archer vanished beyond the lip of the ledge.  
Trip resumed climbing, matching his breaths to the rhythm of his footsteps. Almost there. Almost… there. Only another what? Fifty or sixty steps?  
The bluff hadn’t seemed all that high, viewed from the start of the trail, when most of it was hidden by the curve of the land and the dense, summer-green foliage.  
Probably a good thing. Trip didn’t mind scrambling around the top of a warp engine or over a catwalk, but after childhood falls off a roof and out of a tree, outdoor heights were never gonna rank up there on his top-ten favorites list. Not like they did for Commanders Archer and Hernandez, who actually took their off-duty weekends to go mountain climbing together!  
(Of course, half the attraction of those treks could be the company… and, just maybe, the privacy!)  
Two more steepish stairs, then three, four. All right, heights weren’t a favorite, but there were ways to deal with them. A few focused deep breaths banished the occasional involuntary jelly-shivers in his knees and kept his adrenaline from running too high. Most important was staying alert to the demands of his surroundings.  
Yeah, he could deal. Especially when this hike was part of the final selection process for Starfleet’s first deep-space mission aboard NX-01 Enterprise. The Commander had said, back when he, Trip and A. G. Robinson proved a prototype vessel could exceed Warp Two, he wanted Tucker as Chief Engineer when he got his own command. Already this past year, Trip had lived on the edge of his dream of deep-space exploration, as he headed up the team bringing one after another of the ship’s warp systems on line at Jupiter Station.  
Still, a lot more would be expected of him than knowing his way around an engine once they were out among the stars. Like being on away details to planets with diverse and unexpected conditions.  
So far today, things had gone pretty well, even when the green canopy of tree branches overhead thinned, then gave way to an uninterrupted view of cloudless blue skies. Of course, most of his attention had been focused on the placement of his feet on uneven grey surfaces, the realistic pacing of his exertions in the mid-afternoon heat and keeping within a reasonable distance behind Commander Archer.  
Only another twenty, thirty steps now to the plateau. They wouldn’t be effortless anymore, like the first few hundred had been. Or just kind of wearing, like the next several hundred after that, when his breaths came a little deeper, a little faster and his quad muscles began giving him gentle reminders that they were getting a nice workout here, and wanted him to stop more often for some hydrating, thanks.  
He’d had one rough moment when, unclipping the water-bottle from his belt, he’d taken time to savor the refreshing tendrils of breeze across his neck and the run of cool liquid down his throat, then glanced over his shoulder and realized how far he’d come.  
How far… up… he’d come.  
Something in his stomach had jiggled. He’d leaned a hand on the reassuring grey wall of the rock-face beside him as he gaged the shape and texture of the stony surfaces ahead and where his feet should go. A long, deliberate breath made the sensation subside.  
It had been harder going after that. But he’d made up his mind to quit keeping track of the stairs he’d climbed and focus on the top of the trail. That helped. A lot. And now- great! It looked like only fifteen, twenty steps left!  
And it hadn’t been that bad. Even the narrowest steps must’ve been, what? Two feet wide? Oh, come on, get real. Make that three. And hadn’t he repelled up and down cliff-sides as tall and steep as this bluff during Starfleet survival training?  
So what if he’d been strapped in a harness then, with a rope to hang onto? Or that his concentration had been so taken up with handholds and footholds and the stark, grey view of the rock-face in front of his nose that he hadn’t had time to think of much else? Those heights hadn’t been so different than this, had they?  
He was gonna make it. Had to make it. Enterprise was the big goal, waiting out beyond today’s exercise. No matter that, after the months of testing and training, he could almost feel it within reach, right now he’d settle for the cave at the far end of the plateau. He’d sit a few minutes, have a long, slow drink of water, munch a few nuts, enjoy their salty taste on his tongue and compare notes with the other people in the group.  
Shouldn’t be more than another twenty, thirty minutes til then. The ground on the plateau was supposed to be a little rougher than on the carved stairs, but more or less level. That thought had his quads gearing up to celebrate. He’d handled rough terrain during earlier training exercises. Like that week long stretch on the Appalachian Trail last spring when three of his companions dropped out due to injuries or exhaustion. Then came the four-day spelunking trek through caves in New Mexico. He’d loved the rock formations with all their shapes and colors, while many members of the group said the place gave them the jitters, that the walls were closing in on them. He hadn’t worried about rough terrain during the time in the Australian Outback, either. Only about keeping going in the wilting heat, and swallowing- then keeping down- those squiggle-legged sugar ants, as well as all that tough, stringy snake-meat.  
Yeah, he was almost past the worst of this climb. Not that he’d allow himself to be over-confident once he was on the plateau. Just because it was level didn’t mean there couldn’t be a twisted or broken ankle if he didn’t pay attention to rough spots. But he’d made good time on the up-climb and he wasn’t gonna rush himself into carelessness.  
Ten steps. Almost there. He’d make it. No sweat. Except, maybe for wondering what the Commander would write about him in his evaluation.  
“Tucker completed test within required time parameters. Used good problem solving skills. Final recommendation is for posting as Chief Engineer, NX01, Enterprise…”  
Five steps. He could just see over the top of the highest one. Yeah, it looked flat up there okay. He began to grin. Four, three, steps to go. Two. One. Yes! He’d made it!  
He was rewarded by another brush of wind against his face and through his sweaty hair. Sighing in relieved satisfaction he raised his gaze to locate Commander Archer.  
And without warning, it smacked in on him, with stunning force.  
The dream. The scariest, most relentless nightmare of his life!  
Damn! He hadn’t had it in, what? Twenty years? Not since he was a kid. But it was here now all right. And not in the half-shaped, half-colored images he’d’ve remembered if he’d ever thought back to the thing. No, this was in full, right-in-your-face color, all vivid golds, blues, greys, and greens that should have been beautiful! Sunlight, sky, rock and, far below, just showing beyond the edge of the trail, the tree-tops.  
Every muscle in his ankles, knees and gut shivered into instant jelly.  
He drew a breath, stretched it out two, three, four calming seconds, then lifted his left foot all of what had to be twelve inches, planted it in a shadowy space between two good sized rocks, then put his right foot in front of it. Not a big step. Shoulda been no work at all. Except this place looked so much like that dream he couldn’t quite shake the inevitable feeling that, after all the years of letting him think he’d escaped its clutches, it had come back for him at last.  
There wasn’t gonna be any blinking it away this time, or telling himself he had to wake up now! He was already there.  
He’d expected when he got here, to take a triumphant look down at where he’d come from. Maybe see trees below. But viewing it all at a comfortable distance from the edge as he enjoyed the plateau’s wide surface and a good, cool, rehydrating drink! There might be a good solid rock-face to lean a shoulder on as he munched nuts and fruit and gathered energy for the next stage of the hike.  
But the plateau was scarcely wider than the trail.  
And there was no sturdy surface to lean against and gather himself. The trail’s other edge dropped away as steeply as the one beside the stairs. The treetops down that side looked no bigger than bright green broccoli florets, swaying a little as the afternoon wind moved their branches.  
God, up til now, he’d always kind of liked broccoli.  
Again, his stomach jiggled.  
He knew what would happen. Ahead of him the trail was gonna narrow…  
No, that was the dream… He had to remember that. Only the dream. The real trail was gonna be fine.  
Yeah, right, try telling that to his knees.  
The trail would narrow until there was no room even to turn around. It would start slanting downwards, growing steeper and steeper… Momentum would push him onward even if he tried to stay absolutely still. Gravity would grab hold of him then and pull harder and harder, no matter how he fought against it. The ground would dissolve away, the tiny world below would grow bigger, bigger, rushing up to meet him. No way to stop falling, however loudly he screamed at himself to wake up, wake up, wake up right now, before it was too late!  
Come on, Trip, that was a kid’s dream! He was gonna look ahead at the perfectly level trail and take one step and another and another until he reached the cave and the solid reality of his companions.  
But the dream was so damn vivid! Like all those times before, it had come in on every side of him, then clung like a second skin.  
Cold sweat trickled down the back of Trip’s neck. He could hear the thunder of his heart and the rasp of his panting breaths.  
Still, he’d managed to take one step forward, hadn’t he? And now there would be another. Good. Every muscle vibrated with dread, but he could manage one more step, right? Maybe then he’d pause for some water. To take a couple deep breaths. To steady himself against those echoes of the pas. To damn well get a grip!  
But it was such an awful dream! It had chased him through his childhood, showing up every month or so from when he was maybe five or six until he was somewhere in middle-school. He’d always recognized it from the start. Knew what would happen, because it was the same way every time. He was moving forward along a high place, when he saw that both sides were dropping steeply away from him.  
Like he was doing now!  
And he’d discovered nothing was gonna change it, even after he learned to tell himself “It’s only a dream. Only a dream! Only…!” And telling himself “wake up, come on, Trip! Ya gotta wake up now! didn’t keep him from being swept toward the spot where there was nothing left to do but fall…  
Until with a kind of thump he’d find himself staring up into darkness, all tangled up in sweat-soaked sheets…  
Then, sometime in middle-school, he read about déjà vu. Hey! Maybe that was all that dream was, a couple of tangled memories, maybe from tumbling out of that tree, or off the roof. Events familiar enough to recognize, but too old and vague to sort out into something that made sense. Yeah! Great! Déjà vu! He liked that idea! Problem solved! There’d be nothing for him to worry about when the dream came next time.  
What a relief that had been!  
And it lasted until the very next week.  
Then he went to church with his folks and heard about how dreams were sometimes sent by God as prophecy… Warnings. Foreshadowings of what was to come!  
Oh, holy crap! Not the past… The future!  
That idea had kept him awake, staring at the moonlight creeping across the ceiling, waiting, wondering. But even when, as the first grey light painted the window and he fell into exhausted sleep, the dream hadn’t come.  
Not that night. Or the next. Not that week. Or that month. And it didn’t come the month after that either. Time wet by and the memory of it faded. He quit thinking about it, or wondering whether it had really gone away for good.  
And now… after all these years… here it was again! Big and bad as ever.  
But this time… It was real!  
Trip fumbled the water bottle from his belt and lifted it to his lips with hands he couldn’t quite keep from shaking. He took two, three, four long swallows.  
Water splashed down the front of his shirt. Cold, cold water.  
He squinted into the brightness of the afternoon trail. Somewhere, after his next few steps, it would narrow. It would slant down and down…  
“Oh, give it a rest, Trip!” He muttered and managed to recap the bottle, though he could see the scatter of dark spots on the sun-baked rocks where liquid had spattered. Where the trail would narrow and gravity would start to tug…  
Thinking about it wasn’t gonna help.  
Not trusting himself to refasten the carabineer, he clutched the water bottle and forced his left foot forward. Found beautiful solid rock beneath it. Then his right foot. There was a resting spot for that one, too. Another step. Good ground. Hard ground. Another. Yes! Another.  
He knew, knew, knew this wasn’t the dream, but his drying throat and trembling muscles weren’t sure they believed him.  
Why didn’t childhood nightmares grow smaller when the kid got bigger?  
The trail stretched ahead of him with the cave at the end of it. Had the Commander mentioned the distance before beginning the climb?  
God, that coulda been years ago.  
What was that up ahead? No cave, but… A large, black boulder maybe fifty yards away. He wouldn’t look at the sides of the trail. Only at the ground in front of his feet and at that rock!  
Another step, solid ground again, and now the rock was two feet closer.  
Right foot, left foot, right. But any moment, the ground would dissolve under him…  
No, Trip! Can’t keep thinking that. It doesn’t matter how it looks here. Just go slow, go careful. The trail’s fine. It’s gonna stay fine. Gotta stay fine.  
God, if the Commander knew what irrational things he was thinking right now, there went his chances to be posted to the NX vessel!  
Jon Archer was his friend, his damn good friend, but having a crew he could rely on in deep space was a matter of survival, not of friendship. Trip was a good engineer, but that wasn’t worth a damn if he couldn’t back it up with courage and steady nerves.  
He mopped sweat out of his eyes. Forty yards to the rock. He paused at the crunch of gravel behind him. The girl who’d hit the trail five minutes after his own start time was catching up. Her footfalls sounded sure and even. “You okay, Lieutenant?” she asked.  
“Needed…” He realized he was panting. “A hydration break.”  
“Want me to stay with you a while?” She studied his face. “You look kind of shaky.”  
“Nah,” he shook his head. “I’ll be okay in a minute.” And he would, wouldn’t he?  
“Okay.” To his amazement, she stepped around him and ambled down the trail.  
Trip watched her go. Drew a deep breath, then followed. Moved his right foot, then his left. Reminded himself the trail wasn’t slanting. It’d be easier to believe if the feel of that dream wasn’t still so close all around him. Thirty yards to the rock now. And no, the trail wasn’t narrowing. Twenty yards. Ten. He took another step, another. Another.  
Only three or four more steps to the rock. But his knees were shaking so hard with fatigue it could have been miles. He stretched out the hand not grasping the water bottle, brushed its black surface and felt the sun warming it. He pressed his palm to it, savored the heat, then, joint by careful joint, lowered himself onto it.  
The dream was only a dream. At least for today. No déjà vu. No foreshadowing.  
But he was spent. Gravity might not be planning to drag him over the edge of the plateau, but it was pressing down on him too hard for him to even lift the hand holding the water bottle. No way he could pull himself to his feet and go the next distance to the cave at the trail’s summit. Not yet. He was way too tired to move, even with the time allowed to complete the hike melting away.  
Truth be told, he was surprised he’d gotten this far.  
But Jon… the Commander… who’d be the Captain any day now… was probably gonna want a different Chief Engineer after this.  
Trip’s sigh came from a sadness heavier than gravity. To have been on the edge of realizing his best dream of space exploration, then have it pounded into submission by his childhood’s worst nightmare, that was harder than anything he’d ever imagined!  
Finally working open the water bottle, he took a long, slow swallow as two more hikers approached, their voices lilting in cheerful conversation. At least that mouthful of water spared him from having to speak through the sorrow.  
“Lieutenant?”  
Taking another swallow, he nodded a n acknowledgement, then, still silent, waved them on with a hand that must have weighed fifty pounds.  
He’d been so damn sure he could handle anything Starfleet survival training threw at him. Scuba diving, winter camping, the caves, the Outback. Even eating sugar ants and snake-meat. The description of this bluff hadn’t sounded bad. Hell, it hadn’t even looked bad. At least, not from the bottom.  
But it wasn’t the bluff that had drained every reserve of energy he had, leaving him here on this rock, hollow and exhausted, was it? No! It was a crazy nightmare he hadn’t thought of in years! Damn, he was too tired even to feel humiliated. Or regret the words his old friend would write in his report. “Tucker did not complete the course within thee allotted time. Failed to reach the halfway point. Though a fine engineer, recommend he be dropped from consideration for the NX crew, but, with his skills in mind, he be assigned to the design facility at Utopia Planetia, or the shipyard at Jupiter Station…”  
He’d have to face that. But that was for later. For now, he needed to sit, to feel the sun, warm on his face, the rock strong and steady beneath him and gather his strength.  
Maybe, after that, whether it served any career purpose anymore or not, he’d consider how there might…just might… be a way… to make it to… the cave. At least it’d mean he’d tried to overcome his grown-up waking nightmare with as much determination as he’d fought the sleeping one of his childhood.  
Yeah… That’s what he’d do, but… after another minute’s rest. Just another…  
He must have slept… drowsed anyway… because without any sense of time passing at all, he became aware of a voice, out past his closed eyelids.  
“Lieutenant? Lieutenant Tucker?” Archer’s voice. Jon’s… “You all right, Trip?”  
“Yeah, Commander.” His voice held the slurred sound of half-waking. “I’m okay.”  
But as recognition that he still sat on a rock nowhere near the end of this endurance challenge came back to him, Trip knew it was a lie. He was anything but okay.  
“You steady enough to head back down? A couple of our other hikers said they thought you might be dehydrated or something. That you didn’t look so good.”  
“I think so.” He looked up, both at his friend Jon and his commanding officer, not sure which Archer he was speaking to more. “I can make it. I just… Damn it all, I couldn’t get myself to keep on going any further!”  
Archer’s brows rose. His hand touched Trip’s shoulder. Brisk, firm reassurance. “Happens to all of us sometimes, Trip.”  
“I guess. Probably screwed my chances of making the cut for Enterprise though.”  
Archer’s thoughtful green eyes widened, though he didn’t rush to respond. After a long moment, he met Trip’s question with one of his own. “Why do you say that?”  
It wasn’t a question he’d been expecting.  
“I…” God, he hated to say the word, but there had never been anything less than honesty between the two of them. “I… panicked.”  
“When?”  
“When I cleared the top of the plateau and saw the edges dropping away on both sides. I… I used to dream about that when I was a kid. Scared the hell out of me, walking on a ledge or riding a bike on a road that got narrower and narrower then began to drop away.”  
Archer was smiling a little. “Can’t say I’ve had that one. It sounds bad.”  
“It was.” Trip managed half a laugh, but heard the bitterness in it before it died away. “Real bad. The worst part’s knowing you don’t need a crewman who gives in to panic.”  
Unfortunate he wasn’t too tired anymore to feel humiliation. Or to know he’d gotten so close to reaching his dream, to making the final cut and then falling apart.  
“You’re not at the edge of the plateau now, are you?” asked Jonathan.  
“I thought if I could get to this rock and rest a minute, I could head for the cave.”  
“Go beyond where you first thought you could?”  
Silent, Trip nodded.  
“Trip, everybody has limits. It’s not bad to learn what they are, then to try to surpass them. I don’t think there’ll be one of us who doesn’t come up against something too big to handle when we get out there, do you? I’m not looking for fearlessness. I’m looking for people who strive to get even past the fear.”  
“You’re not just sayin’ this because we’re friends?”  
“I think you know me better than that.”  
Trip nodded. Smiled a little. “Yeah. So…” He tried to make his next words sound a little casual. Tried not to think of the edge of the plateau giving way, or the edge of his dream crumbling from under him, but of the future laying out there… even just a little ways out there… ahead of him. “I’m not out of the running for a place on Enterprise?”  
“No.” Jonathan chuckled, a small, brief sound. There was a reflective note in it that had Trip wondering what nightmares of his own his old friend had had to battle through.  
“You’re not out of the running. Not because of anything that happened today.”  
His hand touched Trip’s shoulder again in that quick, firm reassurance. This time his chuckle was full enough to crinkle the corners of his green eyes, even though his words were brisk. “But if you were being evaluated on your cooking, I’d have to think twice about it! Now, Lieutenant, do you think you’re ready to safely start back down?”  
Trip looked back along the trail and wiped a trickle of sweat from his forehead. He’d really come quite a distance, hadn’t he? A lot further than he’d realized along a trail that led out of his past, but now, as it turned him toward his future, looked reasonably wide.  
He took a good long drink of water. His quads were gonna appreciate that.  
Then he looked up to where Jonathan Archer stood beside him. “No problem, Commander.” He said.


End file.
